JasperSoft Advances Business Intelligence for Big Data

Open source business intelligence vendor takes a different approach to analyzing Hadoop.

Open source business intelligence provider JasperSoft is among the many software vendors looking to help companies derive value from Big Data information. The new JasperSoft 4.5 release isn't just about connecting to Big Data, it's about analyzing the data quickly.

Mike Boyarski, director of product marketing at JasperSoft, explained to InternetNews.com that analytics solutions typically connect to Big Data framework Apache Hadoop via the Hive interface. Hive provides a SQL layer for Hadoop, using a syntax familiar to enterprises. A problem with Hive is that it can add latency, slowing the analytics process.

JasperSoft 4.5 takes a new approach to connecting to Hadoop data. Instead of getting at the data via Hive, JasperSoft uses the HBase layer. The end result, according to Boyarski, is that users no longer need to wait long periods of time during data analysis.

“HBase does not have a SQL interface, so it's different but we're able to pass query parameters and filters to the storage engine and get results," Boyarski said. "Based on those results we can then format the data so that someone can make sense of it."

By going the HBase route, JasperSoft loses the power of SQL. Boyarski noted that the HBase interface is designed more for short, iterative queries that don't require the MapReduce infrastructure, as Hive does. As such, HBase has a simpler structure and lacks the strength of SQL. It is faster, however, since it has less overhead.

“The downside to the simplicity is that there is only so much you can pass through the query filter,” Boyarski said. "It's evolving, and as HBase improves we will be able to pass more to the environment to take advantage of more sophistication."

While the process of analyzing Hadoop data using HBase is faster from a processing perspective, writing queries with the HBase approach might involve more time up front.

“We haven't got to the point where it's a wizard-driven query design environment," Boyarski said. "I would expect that is something that we'll look at in the future as we do have a metadata layer solution for relational data, and that is a wizard-driven query designer."